problem that persists in spite of the efforts of Morley and Traill. Mr. Bigham's book makes interesting and honourable figures of them all; the author seems, indeed, to have a certain affection for those whose fame has almost vanished-Wilmington, the Dukes of Devonshire and Portland, Perceval, and Goderich. Prime Ministers of recent times, including Mr. Lloyd George, are studied with remarkable insight and impartiality, and excellent portraits add to the pleasures of the volume. Besides an impressive bibliography Mr. Bigham supplies a final chapter in which the Prime Ministers are the victims of a statistical inquiry that has rather a whimsical effect. Here they are sorted out by race, birth, county of origin, school and university, civil state, age on entering Parliament, and the like. If anything seems to rank as a serious qualification it is the inheritance of Parliamentary tradition. Most of them had had fathers in Parliament; more than half of them had had grandfathers there.

Hassan, by James Elroy Flecker (Heinemann). "The story of Hassan of Bagdad and how he came to make the Golden Journey to Samarkand" forms a play in five acts of prose that by reason of its Oriental imagery and its own intensity is always on the verge of poetry, leaping at times into the lyrics already known to Flecker's readers as "The Golden Journey to Samarkand.” The public has been in some peril of growing jaded with as much of the romantic East as the scenepainter and the wardrobe could supply, but here is the work, perhaps the masterpiece, of a poet. In the days of Haroun ar Raschid there dwelt in Bagdad one Hassan, by trade a confectioner, by higher election a poet. He reveals to his friend Selim his love for the beautiful Yasmin who has visited his booth, and Selim cheats him of ten dinars for a love philtre. At night Hassan is beneath the balcony of Yasmin, whom he serenades with one of the famous lyrics. The greedy and voluptuous widow shows herself, but at the end of their dialogue Selim reveals himself behind her, and the two mock and insult Hassan, who falls distraught in the shadow of the fountain. The Caliph, his Vizier, his Executioner, and his Poet, wandering the crooked streets attired as merchants, hear music in a neighbouring house, and demand admission. The answer makes them scent adventure, and all but the Poet, who is eager for solitude, are drawn up to the window in a basket. The Poet finds Hassan lying senseless, puts him in the basket in his own place, and escapes. The Caliph and his companions find themselves (Act II.) the guests of Rafi, the King of the Beggars, in "the house of the moving walls," and learn of his ripening conspiracy to overthrow Haroun and seize the city. Hassan regains his senses, and is one of the party when Rafi tells how he seeks vengeance for the loss of Pervaneh, his betrothed, sold as a slave to the Caliph. His guests cannot control themselves; Rafi leaps away, and walls of iron fall and imprison Haroun and the others. It is Hassan who makes it possible for a written message to reach the outside world. In the end the prisoners are released, and Hassan is promoted to rank second only to the Grand Vizier. Yasmin completes his disillusionment by her readiness to abandon Selim for the new dignitary. Act III. opens with Hassan running the manifold hazards of conversation with the Caliph, who has captured Rafi and his

band. Into Hassan's new pavilion Yasmin has smuggled herself; disgusted with her wiles he is ready to slay her, but her beauty daunts him, and the scene closes with her victory. Pervaneh and Rafi meet once more before the Caliph in his Hall of Justice. He gives them a choice: either Pervaneh shall remain in his harem and Rafi leave Bagdad, or the two shall have a day of love unfettered and alone, and die at its end in merciless torment. The lovers choose the second alternative, and the play, rich in poetic beauty, closes with echoes of their execution and the delightful song of the pilgrims taking the Golden Road to Samarkand. The mingling of Eastern splendour and cruelty, of beauty and catastrophe, gave Flecker's genius its fullest scope. The play reads marvellously, and its presentation on the stage should finally confirm the author's reputation.

Through the Fourth Wall, by W. A. Darlington (Chapman & Hall). The writings collected in this volume by the dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph cover a period of two years. Dramatic criticisms of any true quality bear reprinting, as witness the works of Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Walkley, or Mr. James Agate, and though Mr. Darlington does not display the same arts and graces, his sanity and humour have been excellent preservatives. These criticisms fall into three sections: those about Plays, those about Players, and those dealing with the Theatre in general. Each essay is dated so as to clear up any passing topical references. Any preference the reader may express will probably be in favour of the section on Players. Mr. Darlington knows the limitations of admirable players as his paper on Maurice Moscovitch's Shylock, that on "English Actresses in French Parts," and the three on the company playing Shakespeare at Stratford abundantly prove; and "On Speaking Up" shows that he realises their duty to the audience beyond the first few rows of stalls. Mr. Darlington throws much interesting light on many aspects of the theatre, and his quickness with facts and instances affords his principles excellent support and gives his papers their title to preservation in book form.

The Evolution of Consciousness, by A. Wyatt Tilby (Fisher Unwin). The author begins his closely-reasoned, but lively and allusive, argument with a study of the development of the senses and intellectual faculties in their order and relationship, considering taste, smell, sight, and hearing, in that sequence, as "specialised and derivative extensions of the sense of touch, the primary sense which is universal in all animate matter." He then passes to the Will in Nature, its three categories of Will to Live, Desire, and Purpose, and its modifications, mimicry, domestication, and parasitism. Consciousness develops as a result of the Will's new range of power over circumstance. Mr. Wyatt Tilby does not attempt an exact definition of consciousness in different organisms, but implies that its nature is clearly chemical. Between consciousness and sex the connexion is very intimate; the asexual is unconscious, the hermaphrodite imperfectly conscious; male and female represent consciousness active and passive. The genesis of love, the relations between physical characteristics and psychic qualities in the sexes, and the miraculous advance from the physical plane to the spiritual, receive careful treatment. The old dispute as to the

D

relations and functions of instinct and intellect arises from Mr. Wyatt Tilby's treatment of the distinction between memory and consciousness, and his analysis of memory into its categories-physical and mental, racial and individual-almost entirely outside consciousness. Mr. Wyatt Tilby writes lucidly and picturesquely. It is rare to find a treatise of this nature so near akin to pure literature. The range of literary reference and allusion throughout the work deserves special admiration and gratitude.

The Economics of Socialism, by D. M. Hyndman (Grant Richards). In an age in which Socialism is a word very frequently used but not always clearly understood, a book which purports to explain the meaning of the term in all its bearings must be sure of a welcome, especially if it claims to be "popular." Mr. Hyndman's book is of this character, and no better guide to the teachings of Socialism could be desired. He sets out here to make Marx easy; and he rightly claims as an advantage, apart from a life-long occupation with the subject, personal acquaintance with Marx, with whom he discussed the more difficult passages in that author's great work. Admittedly Marx was one of the great minds of the last century, and there are many economists who, though they do not subscribe to the Socialist doctrines, yet appreciate the genius of the man who formed them into a system. Mr. Hyndman is at pains to defend Marx from both his friends and opponents; is he not rather tilting at windmills? But this attitude of mind, as well as a certain dogmatism, is reflected in Mr. Hyndman's pages, and here and there (as for instance in his chapter on Wages) the treatment is somewhat slight. The book is, however, very readable, and for those who wish for an easy introduction to Marx and the Socialist economic system it can hardly be improved upon.

A Dictionary of Applied Physics, edited by Sir Richard Glazebrook. Vols. I. and II. (Macmillan & Co.). The appearance of the Dictionary at the present time is particularly opportune: industrial research in physics and chemistry has become a normal factor in the conduct of many large businesses, and students throughout the country are seeking to join anew the strands of scientific thought and investigation so rudely sundered by the war. In the commercial and college laboratories alike there is a common need for a single compilation which, in so far as this may be possible, shall bring together the sum of our useful, reliable, and essential knowledge of the laws of physics and their applications. Such a compilation must remain an ideal, but in the Dictionary we find as good an approach to that ideal as we may hope to see at any time. It was a happy concatenation of courage on the part of Messrs. Macmillan and wisdom on the part of Sir Richard Glazebrook when they decided to embark on this work. By judgment, knowledge, and experience, probably no man in this country is better qualified to edit a work of this kind than Sir Richard Glazebrook, whose long directorate at the National Physical Laboratory has surely given him a proper sense of the relationship between physics as an abstract science and physics as applied to industrial processes and developments. The work is to be divided into five volumes covering respectively: Mechanics, engineering and heat; Electricity; Meteorology, metrology and measuring ap

paratus; Optics, sound and radiology; and Metallurgy and aeronautics. This division of subject-matter has been wisely adopted so that each volume, besides forming an integer in the Dictionary as a whole, will constitute a self-contained unit for the needs of those whose work is concerned more particularly with one branch of physics. Some of the articles are veritable textbooks for the topics with which they deal, and the names of the writers are sufficient guarantee of reliability. Interspersed throughout these two volumes are numerous cross-references, brief articles and definitions, the whole being alphabetically arranged. The magnitude of the complete work is, perhaps, best conveyed by the statement that it will contain between four and five thousand pages. Bibliography is a vital point in a work of this kind, and ample references are given to original papers, etc., both in footnotes and collected tables. In a few cases, reference is given to existing bibliographies, an excellent practice. The range of subjects for main headings is well chosen, and may be judged from the following titles selected at random from the first two volumes: Internal-combustion engines (Sir Dugald Clerk and G. A. Burls); Fourier's series (Dr. Horace Lamb); Air Pumps (the research staff of the General Electric Company); Thermal expansion (Professor A. W. Porter); Positive rays (F. W. Aston); Coal calorimeters (Sir Richard Glazebrook); Liquefaction of gases and refrigeration (Sir Alfred Ewing); Resistance measurements (S. W. Melsom); Primary and secondary batteries (W. R. Cooper); Electron theory (Sir Wm. Bragg); Applications of electrolysis (Professor A. Allmand); Phase rule (C. Dampier Whetham); Wireless telegraphy (Professor W. H. Eccles and others); Thermionics and valves (Professor C. Fortescue, Dr. O. W. Richardson, and Dr. W. Wilson); Electric cables (C. J. Beaver); Fuel calorimetry (W. J. Butterfield); and Galvanometers, Resistance standards, and the Measurement of "V" (F. E. Smith).

There is no finality in the march of science, and these volumes naturally bring in their train the question of the possibility of keeping them up to date. It is greatly to be hoped that the editor and publishers will devise a scheme of supplements which will keep the Dictionary abreast of new developments.

FICTION.

The Judge, by Rebecca West (Hutchinson), was perhaps the most noteworthy novel of the year, and might have been something much more had the author kept to the spirit of the Edinburgh chapters with which the book begins. But with the change to the marshes of Essex, where sweet and vivacious Ellen Melville comes to stay with her lover, Richard Yaverland, in his mother's house, something miasmal invades the pages, and beclouds the characters; they have no real relation to their former selves; their thoughts and deeds are violent and horrible. Miss West makes her text, rather obscurely, of "Every mother is a judge who sentences the children for the sins of the father." Richard's father betrayed his mother, and the village made her pay cruelly for her misplaced, but unfaltering love. The cunning brute who offered her the protection of nominal marriage abused her trust even more hideously when she became his wife, and there is nothing but hatred between

Richard and his worthless half-brother Roger. Ellen finds herself the object of the mother's desperate jealousy, and morbid complexes in the composition of her lover prevent him from giving any moral support in her struggle against the nightmare influences of such a household. Her own mother is dead, and her environment seems to annihilate the qualities that made her so bright and adventurous in Edinburgh days. So around her the darkest passions grow more and more uncontrollable, until the climax comes after the return of Roger with his eminently suitable sweetheart Poppy, and Richard's mother commits suicide, leaving a message on the blotting-pad. As Richard reads it, his halfbrother makes a maddening remark. An instant later Richard has stabbed him to the heart. Ellen and her lover find a hiding-place, and before he is in the hands of the law she is awaiting with incomprehensible calm a possible inheritor of ancestral traits so markedly undesirable. It would be doing Miss West's book an injustice to let the skeleton of her plot alone commend her story, for her descriptions of places are magnificent, and every page bears witness to the brilliance and power of her imagination. The book, indeed, will be remembered for its parts rather than for the whole.

The Cathedral, by Hugh Walpole (Macmillan & Co.). The end of a period, the date marking the beginning of the surges of change that still wash to and fro over England, Mr. Walpole finds in the Jubilee year of 1897. Archdeacon Brandon, symbolising in his strength, loyalty, and simplicity, so much of what was good, and in his pride, tyranny, and obtuseness so much of what was doomed, in the old scheme of things, reaches the height of his personal greatness in the autumn of 1896. He is almost ecstatically conscious of his position as the uncrowned King of Polchester, the reincarnation of the great Black Bishop whose tomb is one of the Cathedral's glories; for the titular Bishop of the day is aged and frail, and Brandon allows none to shine too near himself in glory. One night brings his adored son Falk back from Oxford, sent down for ragging, and plump intriguing Canon Ronder, the man at whose door Brandon is to lay his ruin, arrives by the same train. But the factors of Brandon's destruction are many. His son looks for simple affection away from his home and the Cathedral, and at last elopes with the daughter of a publican, Samuel Hogg. His wife has long hated him for his utter obliviousness to her claim to an opinion independent of his own, and offers little resistance to the passion which overcomes her for the disregarded Canon Morris. In the Precincts there are men and women glad enough to see him humiliated, and he has enemies in the town. There is instinctive antagonism between him and Ronder, who withstands the Archdeacon in the Chapter, first on small subjects, then on matters of weight. The opposition to the Brandon despotism rallies round him, and as bewilderment and anger at successive misfortunes overwhelm Brandon's mind, and help an organic weakness to wreck him physically, he sees in Ronder the embodiment of devilish influences at work to drag him to the lowest depths, to join the drunken painter, Davray, who mocked him in his own Cathedral, Samuel Hogg, who attacked him on Jubilee night, and their evil kind. It is Ronder, too, who seeks to destroy the Cathedral itself, by electing to a coveted